And the funny thing is, you paid for it too.
The lie is so fucking obvious that I’m embarrassed it took me this long to call it out.
In the MMO space. They told you that flashing income screenshots and Lamborghini photos would attract high quality clients to your business.
They sold you the dream that “income attracts income” and all you need to do is show people how much money you’re making to get them to pay you money.
And in the wise words of my favourite comedian of all time, George Carlin: It’s bullshit. Complete, grade A, premium bullshit.
But hey. Income porn looks good from a visual point of view. It looks sexy on Instagram reels and your Facebook feed, but you attract broke people who are desperate to make money fast.
(Yes. We’ve all been there. We’ve all started back in the day by Googling: “how to make money on the internet”)
But when you do all this online flashy bullshit about all the riches they can have. You end up getting clients who are more interested in your bank account than your actual skills.
You start to build an audience of wannabe entrepreneurs who think success is a Instagram story away and I mean if you’ve seen Instagram within the last 6 months. Holy shit balls it’s bad.
The thing is. These are not good clients. These are not people who will pay you premium prices for quality work. These are bargain hunters and dream chasers who will nickel and dime you to death while expecting miracles.
But your favourite guru frames it like it’s easy.
“All you need is $100 and this software and you can be raking in $5K per month in as little as 90 days!” Sure, it’s technically possible. (LLM bros lol)
But so is winning the lottery. Both require a combination of skill, timing, and luck that most people don’t possess.
What they don’t tell you is that those 90 days involve working 12 hour days, failing repeatedly, learning skills you didn’t know existed, and dealing with rejection that would make a telemarketer cry. They don’t mention that most people quit after week two when they realise that “passive income” requires active effort. I mean damn. Can’t I just push a button and make my millions?
People are lazy fucks who want results without work. Gurus know this, so they sell the dream and leave out all of those nightmarish steps. They show you the destination but hide the fucking mountain you have to climb to get there and the mountain sucks cause it’s covered in snow and there are wolves out to eat you, oh and you’re climbing barefoot AND it’s -20 degrees outside…
The coaching space is especially rotten with this too. Every other LinkedIn post is some “coach” showing off their Shopify dashboard or their course launch numbers, pretending that screenshots equal expertise, which we all know they don’t.
So you need to stop falling for it. Stop buying courses from people whose only credential is making money selling courses about making money or coaching coaches that coach coaches to coach coaches.
Fuck that noise.
Real expertise doesn’t need income porn to prove itself.
Stephen Walker.